Schopenhauer Arthur (1788–1860), German philosopher. Born in Danzig and schooled in Germany, France, and England during a welltraveled childhood, he became acquainted through his novelist mother with Goethe, Schlegel, and the brothers Grimm. He studied medicine at the University of Göttingen and philosophy at the University of Berlin; received the doctorate from the University of Jena in 1813; and lived much of his adult life in Frankfurt, where he died.
Schopenhauer’s dissertation, On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason (1813), lays the groundwork for all of his later philosophical work. The world of representation (equivalent to Kant’s phenomenal world) is governed by ‘the principle of sufficient reason’: ‘every possible objec. . . stands in a necessary relation to other objects, on the one hand as determined, on the other as determining’ (The World as Will and Representation). Thus, each object of consciousness can be explained in terms of its relations with other objects.
The systematic statement of Schopenhauer’s philosophy appeared in The World as Will and Representation (1818). His other works are On Vision and Colors (1815), ‘On the Will in Nature’ (1836), conjoined with ‘On the Foundation of Morality’ in The Two Fundamental Problems of Ethics (1841); the second edition of The World as Will and Representation, which included a second volume of essays (1844); an enlarged and revised edition of On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason (1847); and Parerga and Paralipomena, a series of essays (1851). These are all consistent with the principal statement of his thought in The World as Will and Representation. The central postulate of Schopenhauer’s system is that the fundamental reality is will, which he equates with the Kantian thing-in-itself. Unlike Kant, Schopenhauer contends that one can immediately know the thing-in-itself through the experience of an inner, volitional reality within one’s own body. Every phenomenon, according to Schopenhauer, has a comparable inner reality. Consequently, the term ‘will’ can extend to the inner nature of all things. Moreover, because number pertains exclusively to the phenomenal world, the will, as thing-initself, is one. Nevertheless, different types of things manifest the will to different degrees. Schopenhauer accounts for these differences by invoking Plato’s Ideas (or Forms). The Ideas are the universal prototypes for the various kinds of objects in the phenomenal world. Taken collectively, the Ideas constitute a hierarchy. We usually overlook them in everyday experience, focusing instead on particulars and their practical relationships to us. However, during aesthetic experience, we recognize the universal Idea within the particular; simultaneously, as aesthetic beholders, we become ‘the universal subject of knowledge.’ Aesthetic experience also quiets the will within us. The complete silencing of the will is, for Schopenhauer, the ideal for human beings, though it is rarely attained. Because will is the fundamental metaphysical principle, our lives are dominated by willing – and, consequently, filled with struggle, conflict, and dissatisfaction. Inspired by Buddhism, Schopenhauer contends that all of life is suffering, which only an end to desire can permanently eliminate (as opposed to the respite of aesthetic experience). This is achieved only by the saint, who rejects desire in an inner act termed ‘denial of the will to live.’ The saint fully grasps that the same will motivates all phenomena and, recognizing that nothing is gained through struggle and competition, achieves ‘resignation.’ Such a person achieves the ethical ideal of all religions – compassion toward all beings, resulting from the insight that all are, fundamentally, one. See also KANT, PLATO. K.M.H.